A twisty history: Former Mayor of Evans learns he has more than a dozen half-siblings. Recently, he went to meet them.
Lyle Achziger, the man on the far right, poses with five siblings who attended a reunion recently. Achziger didn’t know about most of them until recently. Courtesy photo.
By Dan England
When the woman introduced herself to Lyle Achziger as his sister, it felt like the end of a lifelong dream. But really, it was only the beginning.
Lyle grew up in Ault on a farm with his mother, Nelda, and a stepfather he calls Dad (and who made it official by adopting him and his brother before he entered elementary school, which is why Lyle and his brother carry the name Achziger). He had a brother, Loren, by Bill Herbaugh (his biological father) and another half-brother, Lynn, by his adopted father, Clarence. He was close to both. He had a great childhood. But he would daydream in black and white about another family. Bill and his mother divorced after he told Lyle’s mother that he wanted to go to Alaska.
When she refused, he went anyway.
He knew he had a dad somewhere out there, and when he would dream, either by day or night, he pictured his father surrounded by kids in a suburban home in Alaska. As soon as he graduated from Ault’s high school, he began looking for Bill. Lyle searched for years with no luck.
“I called anyone who might have records of him,” Lyle said. “That really frustrated me. I knew he had to be somewhere.”
Eventually, Lyle stopped searching. He married Mary and built a life in Evans. You may have heard of him. Lyle was elected to the Evans City Council in 2006 and became the city’s mayor from 2008-14. In 2006, Achziger’s life also changed in another way: He found divorce records from his mother. As it turns out, Bill was using a different name. He changed it to Robert in 1957.
Lyle began searching again, and this time, now that he had the right name, it went much better. He found Bill living in Arizona. (This story is complicated enough as it is, so we will continue calling him Bill).
Lyle wrote Bill a letter that said, essentially, he didn’t want to cause problems, but he was 59 and wanted to spend whatever time he had left with family: He would like to meet him. Bill was 91. Bill didn’t want to cause problems either, which is why he hadn’t contacted Lyle, but Bill was glad to hear from him. He wrote back and said sure. Lyle and Mary jumped on a plane.
Lyle Achziger and his siblings gather around a phone to call Erv, another brother who couldn’t make it to the family reunion. Erv works on a dairy farm in Idaho. Courtesy photo.
“I don’t even remember what we visited about,” Lyle said of their brief time together. “We talked about life in general and even politics a bit. It was really nice, but it was difficult to find stuff to talk about.”
Lyle stuck to his promise. He didn’t press anything, and Bill didn’t talk about any other children.
And yet, as they visited, a car pulled up. Gyla came out and introduced herself as a sister. She was born in 1963 to Irene.
That started a nice relationship. She’s visited them in Evans. They are close.
“It’s been great,” Lyle said. “We just love her to death.”
Lyle also found out from Gyla that he also had a brother and a sister, Robert and Vivian. Robert is Gyla’s sister. Vivian came from Faye, and we’re unsure how they met. (Give us a break. As we said, this is getting complicated). He had lunch with Vivian once, and she now has late-stage Alzheimer’s, so the relationship never really took off. That was OK. He was happy he met Gyla, and he thought that was it.
It was not it.
“Bill wasn’t too forthcoming,” Lyle said. “I found that out later.”
A whole new world
In August last year, Mary got an e-mail from a guy in Oklahoma. His wife was a genealogist as a hobby. Charlene Walker had a mother, Frances, who was married to a Robert Herbaugh in 1949, a year after Loren was born.
Yes, it turned out that Charlene was Lyle’s sister. She also had a sibling, Erv. Erv was born four years after Lyle, and Charlene was born three years after Erv.
Well, Charlene knew how to find all the leaves from a family tree. And here’s where you’d better sit down.
Lyle believes he has 13 siblings by Bill, although one died at birth and two or three others are dead. When you consider Loren, Lyle has 14 brothers and sisters. Maybe as many as 10 women had Bill’s baby.
“Bill liked women,” Mary said, in that dry way that she does.
Now, some of you may be shaking your heads in disapproval. Lyle gets that. But that’s not how this story goes. Lyle could not be more thrilled, and here’s why.
Lyle’s new family started a Facebook page, and they’ve been scorching it up since they found out about each other. They planned a reunion, and he and Mary went out to see them a month ago. It was, quite possibly, one of the strangest family reunions ever to take place, as a half-dozen siblings attended, including Lyle. They rented a venue in Carson City, Nev., because, well, the family was too big for one person’s house.
“It was nothing what I expected,” he said. “I thought we would be timid and nervous. It wasn’t that at all. I think we’d gotten to know each other over Facebook. We’d sent pictures of each other. They told each other about our family. When we met in person, we just took off, like we had been, except it was face to face.”
How could you be nervous and timid when Mary made t-shirts that said, “The Great Herbaugh Sibling Explosion” on it? Or when others brought goofy trinkets as gifts even though no one said to bring gifts, and what you heard, over and over, was “my heart is full?”
Lyle Achziger, right, poses with his newly discovered sibling, Gyla. Courtesy photo.
“The only time it was quiet,” Mary said, “was when there was food in front of us.”
Yes, some have an easier time with it than others. Lyle, who recognizes that he was lucky to have a loving family and an adopted father who loved him, simply says, “Dad was just Dad” and leaves it at that. One brother didn’t want to get involved at all because Bill walked away from him and he remained hurt by that. He came around. They all agreed eventually to leave the bitterness behind them.
The reunion was not about their father, they told each other. It was about them.
Carbon copies
Mary was in awe of the copy/paste siblings that surrounded Lyle at the reunion. They looked alike. The men were all seniors, but all had heads full of winter-white hair like her husband, and they all enjoyed the outdoors: Lyle even had the same style and size and brand of boat Bill once had, and both flew remote control airplanes. They are all conservative politically. Even their handwriting looks the same. They were four of the best days of his life, he said.
“It was a life-changing event,” Lyle said. “I’ve got a whole other family out there I can look forward to seeing. Another chapter of my life has opened up.”
Indeed, the group now is planning a trip to meet a brother who couldn’t make it. That was Erv, the brother of Charlene, who helped track down most of the siblings. He’s a dairy farmer who lives in Idaho. They are talking about heading up there in their Facebook group.
“I’m going to get new T-shirts for that one,” Mary said. “The Great Herbaugh Sibling Invasion.”
Lyle hopes his story encourages others to find their families as well. As for next steps, well, he’s planning that trip to Idaho. But first he needs to head up to Ault for coffee with Lynn, his half-brother who still lives there, and tell him about their family tree that’s sprouted a dozen more branches.